Sugar

So what is sugar? I mean it is those little white cubes that look like salt right? Is sugar just stuff I put in my corn flakes and coffee so they won’t suck as much, cause God knows they suck without it. Enough joking though let us jump to the facts. Sugar is a crystalline substance of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Sugars are made in various ways and are very important to our bodies. Adenosine TriphosPhate or ATP for short is the fuel cell where the body runs all of its acts off of. The sugars we eat are broken down quickly in the body and converted into ATP releasing plenty of energy. That is why once you eat or drink something sugary it is possible to get a sugar rush or sugar high. Your body takes in all that Rats in Attic and breaks it down and floods your body with quick often explosive energy. Do not give a child candy and then expect them to sit for long my friends. This often ends in the child doing the exact opposite. Sugar is just the general title of the sweet substance; in fact sugar has up to 52 distinct names. There is a reason for so many titles for sugar but in the interests of keeping this article focused and short I will be talking about the heavy hitter of artificial sugars and the natural sugars. Let’s talk about High Fructose Corn Syrup or HFCS. Okay. It is a sweetener ? Let me explain. Sweeteners are chemicals used to enhance the taste of foods or drinks. This allows businesses to change their products in a lot of ways. A product may have a lot of fat in it and they would like to appeal to customers who like the item but are concerned about the fat. Companies can eliminate the fats and utilize the sweeteners to make up for the taste. This sounds like a good idea except HFCS is a manufactured sugar. It is far from natural with its 1.7 sweetness index score. (Glucose has a sweetness indicator of.75.) With HFCP being a cheap alternative sweetener many businesses use it to improve the taste of their goods. This is just a general view of HFCS but allow us to change to the natural sugars. Natural sugars are usually in the form of sucrose and are accompanied with some amount of fiber. This means that natural sugars foods such as sugar cane or even fruits provide fiber with their sucrose. The fiber is the key lacking element from the processed products that are full of HFCS. Soluble fiber, as stated in a previous article, helps to control blood glucose in your body, gradually releases energy and aids the appetite hormone Ghrelin in its function correctly. On to another one that is the taste. Why does Sugar taste so good to us anyhow? After a sugary treat touches our tastes buds a sign of pleasure is sent to the brain similar to that of a signal that’s sent from solving a puzzle or getting some sort of reward. Rewards are nice right? Who does not like rewards? Let’s refer back to the end of the last paragraph to the sweetness index. That is just me putting a few things together to think of a response but looking at the sweetness index for fructose, (1.7) the concentration of sweetness is greater so I believe it is safe to presume that fructose gives a stronger sign of pleasure than that of sugar or sucrose. If my premise is anywhere near being right then I might also say that using a stronger reward signal comes more of an incentive to consume more of it. Our bodies love the sweet things. Sugars are fast sources of energy and I think our bodies know this and reward the action of consuming this sort of carbohydrates. Next question. What sugar does for our bodies and what it does to our bodies? I must let it be known that sugar of any type in huge amounts is not great for you fructose, natural, etc.. . As I stated in the paragraph above sugars found naturally have fibers consumed alongside them thus slowing down the pace at which it is absorbed and converted to glucose then later into ATP. Sugars, upon entering the body, are converted into sugar that’s the bodies go to supply of fuel. HFCS are also converted into glucose but at a quicker rate. HFCS are engineered sweeteners which usually are not accompanied by fibers as they are removed in many processed foods as a means to extend the shelf life. Since HFCS has no chemical bonds it’s absorbed into the blood stream more quickly which may lead to what is called a sugar rush. Fructose goes to the liver and triggers the fat creation of fats like cholesterol. The absorption rate of fructose creates a big spike in insulin that’s the body’s fat storage hormone. With all this information thus much I hope you have a general knowledge of sugars. There’s more to get into yet I wanted to keep this article short and I think it’s long enough just covering the surface information. Now the question everyone has been waiting for. Why my father told me to look out for sugar. Some readers may recall the times when people complained about fats resulting in heart attacks, high blood pressure and other ailments. This of course was not helping those who marketed products that contained a high level of fats so alternative searches started. Adding sweeteners was already in practice during the shift so using that to compensate for the taste vacuum removing fats had created was not a massive jump and did not take long to take over. This is not bad by itself, it is just another way of doing things however sugars seem to be found in anywhere a consumer looks and doesn’t look. This becomes a enormous problem when you eat sugar for breakfast, sugar for lunchsugar to get a snack, sugar for sugar and dinner for dessert.